WEEKLY INSIGHTS

The other week I came across an article on what is quickly becoming my favorite blog entitled The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals. The post outlines at least two dozen differences in the way amateurs versus professionals think and act. In this week’s post we are going to highlight some of the key differences between amateurs and professionals.

Year-end giving is a common theme for us and our clients, both because of the general spirit of the holiday as well as the calendar year tax deadline for charitable contributions. Structuring gifts to take full advantage of tax breaks is only prudent, as it reduces the “net cost” to you of supporting your favorite charity and empowers you to consider multiplying your gift and impact.

There are many different ways to define risk when it comes to investing. But one risk that is often overlooked and rarely ever talked about is sequence risk. What is sequence risk you might ask? It is the risk of experiencing bad investment outcomes at the wrong time.

While we will likely have more to say on tax reform in the coming weeks, we’d like to narrow in on a couple particular elements of the proposed reform in this post: the increase of the standard deduction, along with the related changes to the personal exemption and child tax credit.

Super accommodative monetary policy has been necessary to spur economic recovery and ensure markets don’t fall into a deflationary spiral. But these same policies which have kept interest rates at record lows for so long are creating vulnerabilities in the economy as debt levels continue to rise.

Giving someone “good advice” is rarely enough. Most of us already know what we should do, or what the right answer is…yet often times we still do the opposite. Advice moves from being “good” to being “effective” when it is tailored and delivered in such a way that actually spurs the behavioral change needed to attain the desired outcomes.

The prospect of major tax reform is obviously playing a very prominent role on the political stage right now. Given the current focus, we thought we’d write about a widely debated symbol of supply side economic theory - the Laffer Curve.

In order to generate returns in excess of the risk free rate (think FDIC insured savings accounts at banks which are as close to “risk free” as you can get), one will have to take on some degree of risk, which could lead to a loss of principal. As the saying goes, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Or can you?

Since we can’t predict the future with any level of confidence, we chose to take a more humble approach to investing which spreads risk across as many different, non-correlated investments as possible as well as using trend following techniques to provide some downside protection on our publicly traded investments.

I recently read Michael Lewis’ new book entitled The Undoing Project which is all about the history of behavioral economics, which is a discipline that has created a paradigm shift in my understanding of human behavior. In this week’s post we will share one of the many stories from the book and explain how it relates to investment decisions.

Next Tuesday our congressional leaders will return from their August break and begin what is sure to be an exciting fall session. Among many other things, they face the start of a new fiscal year, meaning one of the top priorities in coming weeks will be budget negotiations which could culminate in a standoff between the Capitol and the White House.

Investors have been worried about rising rates and what a rising rate environment means for their bond investments. In response, some investors have concluded that it is better to hold individual bonds versus a bond fund.In today’s post, we’ll unpack why it is a misconception to believe that individual bonds are somehow less risky than bond funds.